I hastened, then, to hide my discomfiture in my peignoir; but at that moment the certainty flashed upon me that I knew not where my peignoir was. I had omitted to note the place where I had laid it down: all places on a shingle beach are alike, especially when that beach is crowded to the water's edge. I was standing face to face with the crowd, dressed in the curtailment of costume already described, which, hanging in dripping folds about my meagre form, rendered grotesque that which by nature was ungainly merely. For the first time in my life I regretted my six feet of stature; at five feet I should have felt less defenceless as well as appeared less conspicuous. There I stood before the world, shivering, lost, and helpless. What was I to do? It was a pressing question, for every moment rendered the situation not only physically but morally more intolerable. Should I return to the water, whence I came? Too late! Not only would I catch my death--a minor evil--but the world by this time knew that I had started to come out, and by detecting the cowardice of my retreat would render it cowardice thrown away. Should I steal the first peignoir that came to hand and fly? Hundreds were scattered about. It was but reaching forth my hand. No, I could not steal: not because I was too honest--far from it; a cowed man is beyond the reach of scruples--but because I lacked the courage to be a thief. I feared detection, and knew I lacked the effrontery to brazen out the robbery. Should I pretend I never had a peignoir, and stalk insouciantly through the crowd and up to the beach as I was? Impossible. I had not the spirits for such a _tour de force_ in the first place, and in the second I had not the figure for it. Moreover, the _mairie_ had issued edicts against bathers promenading without peignoirs, and the thought of being arrested by a squad of gendarmes and marched in my present condition to a lock up was not to be contemplated. I must, therefore, either stand where I was until my peignoir came to me or institute a deliberate search after my peignoir. To search, perhaps for hours, amidst a wilderness of spotless hostile skirts and immaculate shrinking pantaloons for a peignoir scarcely distinguishable from any other peignoir, and which, too, might have already been appropriated by some person more heedless (or more self-possessed) than myself! Decidedly there are times in a man's life when he is forced to avow that Providence has omitted to endow human beings with the only boon really worth their having--the power, namely, of instant and unobtrusive self-annihilation. My search began. I went to a peignoir and examined it; it was not mine. With shaking limbs I blundered towards another a few yards off; it was not mine. At this juncture I heard, and affected not to hear, a titter of laughter. With my heart full of murder and suicide I pounced upon a peignoir quite near at hand. It was the same I had examined first. My brain began to reel.